TODAY marks 100 years since the last person was executed in the city.

Chinese-born Djang Djin Sung was hanged at Worcester Gaol at 8am on December 3, 1919 for murdering fellow countryman Zee Ming Wu.

The victim’s mutilated body had been found in Warley Woods, just 100 yards inside the old Worcestershire border with Birmingham, on June 23, 1919.

Sung, 23, made no formal confession in his final moments, as was expected.

Detailed in former city journalist and best-selling author Bob Blandford’s newly released book Worcestershire Bird police were initially baffled by the case before being afforded two strokes of luck.

Someone of Chinese origin had attempted to cash-in the £240 deposited in the victim’s account the day after the murder at Blythe Road Post Office in Kensington, London.

When questioned at the time the man had run off.

The next day a commotion was heard in a room at a lodging house in Aldine Street, Shepherd’s Bush, London, and a man later identified as Sung was seen running away after an altercation with another fellow countryman Kwo Doung Dson.

A blood stained hammer was then retrieved having been thrown from the lodging room window.

Caught by the Met, Sung was taken to Paddington Green Police Station but denied the murder to Detective Inspector Percy Savage.

The inspector’s notes detailed how Sung did, however, admit to being the man at the Post Office.

He claimed Ling Ding Jig took the hammer from him and killed the victim before giving him the bank book and telling him to collect the money.

Within hours Birmingham officers had rounded up the remaining three of the five men, all of Chinese origin, who’d lodged together and were later revealed to be present at the murder.

The jury took just 10 minutes to return a guilty verdict on October 22 during the hearing at the Shirehall.

At the subsequent appeal it was put that Sung had only witnessed the murder and supplied the weapon, stolen from his employers.

This was dismissed on the grounds that he knew the purpose of the visit to Warley Woods and was thus complicit in the murder.

While the bloodstained hammer thrown out of the window was the final nail in the coffin for Sung.

On Thursday (December 5) at 7pm, Mr Blandford will be at the George Marshall Medical Museum to present his views on the possible identities of nine death masks held in the ‘Murderers Gallery’.

Admission, which also includes access to the museum, is free, although seating is limited to 180.

On Saturday, he will be signing copies of his book at the Guildhall’s Tourist Information Centre between 11 and 2pm.